


All The Queen's Men

by Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)



Series: Voices Like Thunder [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comic), Falling Skies
Genre: Crossover, Dark, Gen, Original Character Death(s), Wordcount: 500-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-04
Updated: 2011-08-04
Packaged: 2017-10-22 15:14:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/pseuds/Jedi%20Buttercup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy wept for the first time since the sky had fallen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All The Queen's Men

**Author's Note:**

> Pre-series for Falling Skies, post-series for Buffy Season 8 (comicsverse).

Buffy collapsed to a seat on the bloody tile in the abandoned house's kitchen, pressing her face to the grimy knees of her jeans, and wept for the first time since the sky had fallen.

She'd hoped, just like everyone else, when the massive ships had appeared over every major city worldwide. Hoped, but planned for the worst: the only sentient thing she'd ever heard of that came from the stars was a Queller demon, and that didn't bode well for whatever else might be out there. She'd called Scotland, San Francisco, and L.A., asked everyone to put the word out, and packed up a couple of SUVs to visit one of the baby slayers' houses out in the countryside. But it hadn't been enough.

Not everyone at the Cleveland House had wanted to go with her. Not everyone had been at home when she'd called, either. She'd only managed a few minutes of conversation with her sister before the circuits had overloaded and cut off all cellular communication. Kennedy had rounded up six of the juniors with nowhere else to go, plus Andrew; they'd packed food, weapons, clothes, and keepsakes, waited long enough to be sure no one else was coming, then climbed into a pair of SUVs and headed out of the city. They hadn't got very far on the crowded highways before the aliens had done whatever they did to kill all the electronics – just far enough to miss the bombs when they fell.

Downtown Cleveland had disappeared. So had Dayton, according to a guy in fatigues they'd run into the next day while hiking along the road in search of a safe place to shelter. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base had been wiped completely off the map. There hadn't been any word yet about what had happened in the rest of the country, but it was a safe bet things were pretty much the same everywhere. No more industrial centers. No more military. No hope of rescue.

Just eight Slayers, a cook slash Watcher scribbling forlornly in a notebook as they traveled, and whatever supplies they could carry or salvage. They'd found other refugees, even traveled for awhile with a larger group – but they'd seen fewer and fewer people every day, once the green-skinned skittering _things_ had started dropping in shuttles and attacking everyone they found out in the open. After that, all bets had been off. Too many people saw a group of girls with one guy as a soft target, and Buffy was sick of hurting other human beings when they could be fighting the creatures who'd done this to them instead.

Detoxing from coffee and chocolate had been nightmarish. Breaking the heels on her last pair of stylish boots had brought a lump to Buffy's throat. Weathering the girls' first monthlies without any meds – after living together for so long, the younger ones had mostly synced up – had kept them holed up in a park with pit toilets for days, making trips to every convenience store for miles for products that would be worth more than gold by the time the year was out. But they'd persevered.

They'd mastered campfire cooking, and filtering their drinking water. They'd learned where to apply pressure, where to twist and where to stab to take down the individual alien creatures. They'd thought they'd been doing well. But no living being still on Earth, no matter their heritage or powers, could stand up to the aliens' two-legged robot weapons – as little Mellie had found out first hand.

Buffy hadn't let herself cry through any of that. Not when her nails broke. Not when she found fleas in her hair and hadn't had a bath in four days. Not when they'd all shared out a handful each of dry Cheerios for dinner because they were out of food and hadn't found an unguarded store in days. Not when Danielle had crept back to them with a gunshot wound and a hysterical story about how Mellie had been taken by the aliens to be harnessed. She hadn't succumbed to the temptation to blame Kennedy for summoning her to deal with a few leftover issues from the grand Slayer Army days, ensuring she wasn't with Dawn and Xander when the capital-A Apocalypse finally came. She'd just gritted her teeth, pulled her Mom panties up, and _got it done_. Like Sunnydale all over again.

But this... she sniffed and wiped the back of a dirty, bruised hand across her cheeks, staring at Mellie's cooling body on the kitchen floor. They'd found her. They'd rescued her: they'd hunted like proper Slayers for the first time in _weeks_ , charging in to carry off all the zombified children they could reach, including Mellie, before the aliens could stop them. There'd been mechs, but they'd lost them, running fast enough to make spots dance in Buffy's eyes from weariness. Then they'd broken into a house with a sharpening block full of knives and started cutting the parasites off the children.

Started – but stopped. Because if a Slayer couldn't survive it....

She didn't know where Andrew had taken the rest of the kids. Didn't care, either; if she couldn't save Mellie, what could she do for any of them? It was Chloe all over again, and worse: because this time, hers had been the hand wielding death.

Shoe soles squeaked as someone else came into the kitchen. Gradually, Buffy became aware of body heat at her back; a head of dark hair at her left shoulder, and an arm reaching around to apply pressure to her right hand.

Her fingers spasmed, and the knife finally fell to the floor.

"What do we do now?" Buffy asked, plaintively.

"We keep going," Kennedy replied, firmly and quietly. "We've come this far. We can't give up now. The others are still out there, and we've got five more girls to take care of."

"Okay," she said, sighing. "Okay."

Then she climbed to her feet and started looking for a shovel.

\---


End file.
